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HISTORY
Gagaku is one of Japanese ancient court music, which has been inherited through about 13 centuries in Japan. ‘The two Chinese characters used to write Gagaku, meaning ‘elegant music’, were originally used in China to signify Confucian ritual music.’( Shigeo, Kishibe. page40). Just as the name came from China, music itself was also from China, and also other countries like Korea and India whose music is recognized as great continental music. After establishment of a government bureau in 701 CE, it started to be recognized as Japan’s own music.

MUSICAL CHARACTERISTIC
Gagaku’s instrumentation is almost as that of an orchestra. There are percussions, strings, and winds. There are particular instruments which play melody and chord. Gagaku have been played with same instrumentation without much change over centuries.

In performance, before the players start playing, the actual piece, a short piece of the tonality is used in a specific way. This is a stylized manner of tuning the instruments.(ibid) This is called Netori.

It is same as overture or introduction of the piece, setting the mood of the mode in which the piece is written.(Malm, William P. page 103)
Gagaku’s other typical characteristic is delay of sounds by each instrument. Gagaku sounds as if it does not have strict sense of meter because of the delayed entrance of other instruments while the melody starts to play earlier. The chief Sho (mouth organ) starts the melody, and second Sho player starts several beats, behind the chief player, He is followed by third. The chief Hichiriki player joins in the Sho ensemble, then the second player behind him, and so on. This delayed entrance is one of the main elements of Gagaku, creating free rhythm.(Kishibe, Shigeo. page41)

HISTORY
In Indian music, there are two types of musical genre: Hindustani and Carnatic music. Long ago these two genre were a single musical genre together, but around 12th century as the result of Islamic conquest, the Indian music was separated; Music in Northern part became known as Hindustani music and the one in Southern part became known as Carnatic(Karnatak) music. They both developed their musical genres differently, and they both are now great traditional music in India.

MUSICAL CHARACTERISTIC
Carnatic music has basic instrumentation: Voice, the drone instrument, the accompaniment, and the percussion. Carnatic music comprises a lot of improvisation in both melody and rhythm section according to these Raga and Tala.
Raga: this is the series of Indian traditional mode.
Tala: this is the series of Indian traditional rhythmical pattern.

Use of drone bass is brought into many musical genres.
‘Drone is a harmonic or monophonic effect or accompaniment where a note or chord is continuously sounded through much or all of piece’(wikipedia)
The function of the drone bass is to provide a firm harmonic base for the music.

An instrument called Sho (mouth organ: the harmonica, the organ, the accordion, etc), which plays chord and harmony plays drone bass in Gagaku. The Sho,

is a small free-reed mouth-organ with 17 bamboo pipes (two of which are muted) set into a wind chamber(Sadie, Stanley. page 537). In Gagaku, it usually plays 5 or 6 notes simultaneously, which creates tone cluster. This cluster is known as Aitake in Gagaku. Aitake has its configuration along with the base note

. The cluster chords shift along with the melody line, making dissonance against them at the same time. Although chords are altered often according to the melody, there are sustained notes through the piece; there are two notes sustained in the cluster chords, which are A and B according to the chart.These drone sounds are not bass range sound, within clusters however this shows characteristic of drone in the way there are sustained notes in it.

This sho, which creates tone cluster folds the sounds of other instrument section in Gagaku, as the Gagaku musician and professor Sukehiro Shiba describes ‘if the Outeki (the flute which leads melody) is skin, the Sho is kimono (Japanese traditional dress).’(Matsumoto, Kikuko) This is probably because the Sho follows the core notes of the main melody with its lowest note in the cluster.

For the piece of music I am to analyze in Gagaku, I selected Etenraku.

Throughout the piece the cluster chords are made by Sho(mm. 1-8) from Etenraku

, which make dissonance harmony; you can see that two drone sounds, A and B, are adjacent notes making dissonance harmony, because, as discussed in last section Aitake (the cluster chords) always has two sustained notes throughout the piece.
This score was notated in Western style, but this does not represent the music as exactly as how it should sound.
Ryuteki(the flute) leads the melody line and other instruments follow. Sho follows the direction of melody line and it is basically playing chords not melody. You can see that the lowest note of the cluster is same as the main melody line played by the Ryuteki.
In the recording, you will recognize there are sets of phrase in the melody line, and in between the phrases, there are rests. Hichiriki and Ryuteki have rests in second measure, which is notated as eighth rest.
Next, during these rests, there are only drone sounds being played by the Sho. This is Teutsuri, where Sho’s fingering is being altered in order to create different chords, and because Sho has complex configuration the player needs time to alter fingers. The drone notes sound as if it is keeping a continuity of the music in this piece. At each phrase, one instrument is following another, and you can hear that the Sho has cluster chords making dissonance, but at the same time following the direction of the melody.

Moreover, the two sustained notes are used in the melody consistently followed by E. The Hichiriki starts its phrase at first bar and ends at forth bar with a note of E . In this piece, E seems to be a keynote to finish its phrase which is seen in the actual piece as well as in Netori. (this is the score of Netori)

Within the phrase, at second measure, there is a part the phrase after having the notes A and B natural; A and B are also the notes of drone in the cluster. This is seen in other measures as well: from 9 to 12: 25 to 28: 33 to 40; between 34 to 41

, the phrase finishes at 36 according to the assumption that the phrase ends with E, but after that is cadence played which leads to another E at 41. This coincidence shows that the A and B, which are the drones in the cluster function in order to give the melody a path to finish its phrase, which, in Western terminology, could be explained as resolution.

Accordingly the functions of the drone sound in Etenraku are
To create the dissonance harmony with a cluster chord
To create thicker texture with Aitake cluster chord
To keep a continuity of the music.
To provide the melody line with a path to finish its phrase.